Sumerian·Book

Position in chronology

SAA 04 066. Will Governors and Magnates Return Safely from Media? (PRT 020) [military and political]

~675 BCE·Neo-Assyrian·P336333

Translation — scholar edition

SAA 4
High confidence
(1) Šamaš, great lord, gi[ve me] a firm positive ans[wer] to what I am asking you! (2) Will the governors and magnates, men, horses and army [of Esarhaddon], king of Assyria, who are in Bit-K[a]ri, and are entering Me[dia] to collect a tr[ibute] of horses, [escape fr]om [the troops of the Medes], from the troops of the Scythi[ans, or from any other enemy? ......] (Break) (r 1) Be present in this ram, [place (in it) a firm positive answer, favorable designs], favorable, propitious [omens] by the oracular command of [your great] divi[nity, and may I see (them)]. (r 3) [May (this query) go] to…

State Archives of Assyria, volume 4 — scholar edition (ORACC).

Transliteration

dUTU EN GAL-ú šá a-šal-lu-⸢ka an⸣-na GI.NA a-⸢pal⸣-[an-ni] / LÚ.EN.NAM-MEŠ LÚ.GAL-MEŠ ERIM-MEŠ ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ e-mu-qu [šá mdaš-šur—ŠEŠ—SUM-na] / LUGAL KUR—aš-šur.KI šá i-na É—⸢ka⸣-[a]-ri šá a-na e-se-ri ⸢man⸣-[da-at-ti] / šá ANŠE.KUR.RA-MEŠ a-na KUR.ma-[da-a.a] ⸢ir?⸣-ru-bu i-na [ŠU.2 ERIM-MEŠ LÚ.ma-da-a.a lu-ú] / [i]-⸢na⸣ ŠU.2 ERIM-MEŠ LÚ.iš-ku-⸢za⸣-[a.a lu-ú i-na ŠU.2 LÚ.KÚR mál ba-šu-ú] / i-na…

Scholarly note

Extispicy query addressed to Šamaš, the sungod and patron of divination, edited by Ivan Starr (SAA 4, 1990). The king asks the deity to render a yes/no verdict on a political or military question. ORACC text P336333.

Attribution

Image: Adapted from Ivan Starr, Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria (State Archives of Assyria, 4), 1990. Lemmatised by Mikko Luukko, 2018, as part of the research programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Chair in the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East at LMU Munich (Karen Radner, Humboldt Professorship 2015). The annotated edition is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license 3.0. Please cite this page as http://oracc.org/saao/P336333/..
Translation excerpted from Starr, I. 1990. Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria. SAA 4. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa04/P336333/.

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